


Winter Nights or Mary

by MabelLover



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen, How Do I Tag, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23022433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabelLover/pseuds/MabelLover
Summary: "Sometimes, I ask them about my mother and they speak of a woman who came with a baby on her arms and another ready to pop out of her. She died without ever telling them my name, leaving them to call me the most common one they thought of and my brother's surname.Mary Riddle.Sister of Tom Riddle, the future Lord Voldemort.Someone who was never meant to exist."I am reborn in this world and I change nothing yet everything. I want to live and then I want more than that.Or, how I think it would actually go down if I was reborn in the Harry Potter universe.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 141
Collections: Best Fics From Across The Multiverse





	Winter Nights or Mary

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this from midnight to four in the morning, so it's probably an incoherent mess, but I like it enough right now when I am sleep-deprived, so why not post it?

She was born in a cold winter night to a little whisp of a girl and a boy not much older than her, a pair of siblings cursed by the madness that runs in their family. The newborn's cries cut the air, and the girl tries to shush her daughter as quickly as possible, for the grandfather is coming inside the room and he doesn't look pleased to learn of a female child. The girl angles her daughter in a way that her arms are shielding the baby, but the grandfather doesn't approach them. He simply appraises the baby's dark hair and the flushed look of his daughter and nods once, manifesting his relunctant approval. His son, the girl's brother and the baby's father, walks in and stands behind the older man, and his interest in the child is very evident. He walks over to the girl in large strides, pausing to stand next to the bed, and reaches out a large, calloused and dirty hand to let the newborn's hair.  
"What's her name?"  
The girl shifts slightly away from him, eyes darting to the mattress. She answers in a meek voice, too afraid to speak up.  
"Medea, like Mother."

* * *

  
I had a sister, once. She was younger than me and the most infuriating person I'd ever had to deal with, and I still loved her with all of my heart. For all of our altercations, we knew each other like the back of our hands.  
Tom isn't like her. He is cold and standoffish and he avoids me for as long as possible, the girl with the same surname as his. I'm sure he doesn't believe in our relation, him, a pretty young boy, and me, his older sister who is not pretty, plain faced at best. I haven't been the best to him, too, being generally judgemental in his presence. It is unfair, I know, to blaim a child for the crimes he hasn't yet commited, but I don't feel any real guilt.  
The children of the orphanage aren't kind, they can't afford to be, always on the edge of starvation and hypothermia in the London of the '30s. You can't worm your way into their hearts, not when they have to be shrewd and self-reliant. The matrons, however, appreciate those that are quiet and obedient, and little Mary Riddle who offers to watch the babies when there is a child to be taken care off and helps more on the chores than the required can have an extra biscuit or find a dress of a better quality on occasion.  
Sometimes, I ask them about my mother and they speak of a woman who came with a baby on her arms and another ready to pop out of her. She died without ever telling them my name, leaving them to call me the most common one they thought of and my brother's surname.  
Mary Riddle.  
Sister of Tom Riddle, the future Lord Voldemort.  
Someone who was never meant to exist.

  
A man with auburn hair dressed in a bright orange suit, with a nose that appears to have been broken twice, comes to the orphanage. I am sweeping the floor when Miss Grace calls to me and guides me to a small waiting room where Professor Dumbledore calls me Miss M. Gaunt and hands me a letter that was an unreachable dream in my past life. I tell him that I'll go with him and that my name is Mary Riddle.  
I'm forced to reconsider my plans. Up until now, I've only been surviving, trying to keep a promise I made to my sister long ago. I hadn't expected to be thrown into the mess that was the Wizarding World, with my pratically non-existent magical outbursts. But now that I am a witch, what will I do?  
Professor Dumbledore interrupts my internal monologue when he stops in front of a dirty-looking pub, and opens the door for me. The inside is even more bleak and dreary than the outside: the patrons are all dressed in dark cloaks, smoke from cigarettes and pipes covers the entire air. It's a relief when we exit from a backdoor and stand in a small courtyard in front of a brick wall. Then, the Professor takes out his wand and taps a certain brick to make an entrance to Diagon Alley.

  
It's during the train ride to Hogwarts that I decide to survive first and foremost and to do the right thing next. It may seem selfish, but I have no real connections to anyone. My sister, the only person I truly love, doesn't exist here.  
The children around me speak excitedly of the school, the Houses they'll get into, and, oh, does that frog really move? They are loud, loud in a way that the orphanage children couldn't afford to be, and have no sense of personal space, constantly trying to involve me in their conversation. My one-word responses don't seem to discourage them, and their attention inevitably shifts to me.  
"And you, Riddle, where d'you think you'll go?" It's a small, pudgy faced girl with red hair that introduced herself as Margaret Prewett and that proudly declared herself a Gryffindor. My little glare doesn't shut her up, if anything it makes her more eager to hear my response.  
I dryly answer. " I don't know. Isn't it supposed to not be up to us?"  
And it leaves the children discussing just how the Sorting is made, one Mary Riddle forgotten.  
That is a good idea. To be as inconspicuous as possible.

  
Professor Dumbledore stands tall in his robes, reading the first years' names from a parchment. One by one, the children walk up to the stool and put on the hat, only for it to scream out one of four names and for the kid to join their respective House. There is consistent applause from all Houses, surprinsingly even from the Slytherins. It paints a bleak image, that of the consequences of my brother's crusade, a House lost to prejudices.  
Riddle, Mary is to Hogwarts just another name and to the Sorting Hat just another child. Older than most, but still young to its 1000 years.  
_Hufflepuff_ , I think, eyes closed shut, _Hufflepuff_.  
_My child, I do not believe that to be the correct choice for you. You belong somewhere else._  
_I wouldn't survive there, and that is my main objective. I'm a mudblood to them._  
The Hat is silent for a bit, contemplating. I do something desperate, something that I hate to do. I beg, genuinely beg.  
_Please._  
And then the whole Great Hall hears "HUFFLEPUFF!"

  
It takes ten minutes for Tom to swallow his pride and come to me for help. He refused Professor Dumbledore's help in gathering his materials and went to the Leaky Cauldron by himself, but the entrance to the Platform is a bit more obtuse and I really could use him owing me one.  
"Come with me, little brother." He flinches and glares at me when I call him that, and I barely manage to contain a smirk. He's always hated our technical blood relation, and acknowledging it was never in his plans. He still follows me through the crowd, and I absentmindely wonder whether or not I could get away with shoving him in front of a train. Fortunely for Tom, I don't plan on killing children, even if I don't really like them.  
"So, you just run towards the wall. Right in the middle, and the Platform's on the other side."  
Tom shoots me a look of disbelief, and I shrug and start to run, passing through the wall. Tom comes out just a few moments later, his face betraying just a bit of his awe before he schools his features into a mask like what I've seen the older purebloods wear.  
Tom Riddle is sorted into Slytherin.

  
Thorought his first four years, Tom and I speak a handful of times over trivial things like permissions or the occasional misplacement of an object. He shows no interest in me, and I appear just as bored in his presence.  
Tom rises as an academic star, his high grades and developing charisma making boys respect him and girls swoon. The Professors look at him expecting great things from him, and Slughorn takes him under his wing, convinced that Tom will one day become the Minister. A small group of Slytherins begins to form around him, old and powerfull names - Lestrange, Yaxley, Avery, Malfoy. Only Dumbledore seems to be able to see through the mask  
I become average. My grades are nothing spetacular, my essays show the required and little else. I work fervently to keep it that way, my appearance that of just another Hufflepuff. I tolerate Margaret Prewett, who insists on being called Greta, who was surprisingly sorted into Hufflepuff and not Gryffindor. She drags me out of the Library and the Common Room to take me outside, to catch some sunshine, as she says. She talks non-stop, and braids my hair in a way that makes my face a bit more plain and less straight-up ugly. She is like glue on my side, and I keep her only because of appearances. I'm not getting attached.  
Of course not.

  
It's my sixth year, Tom's fifth, and the attacks begin. Mister Prefect keeps his perfect facade of a worried moral beacon alongside the rest of the school, and the patrols intensify.  
Greta, who already stuck with me at all times, pays even more attention, because I'm supposedly muggleborn and she doesn't want her best friend to be Petrified. She goes with me everywhere, now, to the Hall for breakfast, to the Library for studying, even when she isn't studying, to the bathroom. The other students seem to have similar ideas, but it isn't uncommon to find Myrtle Warren crying alone in the toilet stall.  
I have a decision to make now. Do I take control of the basilisk as the eldest Gaunt to make it stop the attacks and expose myself to Tom as a Parselmouth and as knowing what he's been up to? Or do I allow a girl to be killed in order to save my own skin?  
No, not just mine now. Greta is... my friend. I don't want her to be hurt because of me. And between Greta and Myrtle, it's not hard to choose.  
First me and the ones I love, next the right thing to do.

  
The graduation from Hogwarts is a long, drawn-out affair, with the most wonderful displays of magic I've ever seen. Each student arrives in their uniform, wand in hand, and Headmaster Dippet conjures a silver rain that falls over them, before the pieces that landed on the hands materialize a scroll that declares the end of their education.  
Greta is so excited that she almost floats, and I occasionally have to nudge her down before she starts to fly away. Her energy is so contagious that I let a small smile play out on my lips, just a slight upturn of them that only someone who is always with me could notice. Greta giggles like it is a big secret.  
"You're smiling!"  
"Am not!"  
"Are too!"  
The crowd pays no attention to us now, and it pays no attention when I am called out for the ceremony. Just another Huffleluff, what was her name again, Rhodes?  
"Am not!"

  
The shack has only one occupant, a dirty man with ugly features: his eyes point in different directions, his nose is bent, the hair and beard are too long and filled with knots. He looks miserable, Tom thinks, not at all like he'd expected a member of the House of Gaunt to be like.  
"F'er a moment, I thought you were that Muggle."  
He pays attention to the conversation again. The Muggle, Tom Riddle Senior, the unworthy father he was named after. He would go and rectify the mistake, make sure to destroy that branch, and reclaim the heirloom sitting on Morfin Gaunt's finger to make his Horcrux. That way, he, Lord Voldemort, would be able to cheat Death and-  
"The Muggle my sister took a fancy to. The bitch then ran away, took me daughter too!"  
Tom stopped his inner ramblings. "Your daughter?"  
"Yeah, little tyke she was. She'd be just a year older than ya."  
Mary. Mary was?  
Not now. He has to stick to the plan.  
Tom raises his wand.  
"Obliviate."

  
Greta was kind enough to help me find a job at her family's greenhouse. The Prewetts produce a myriad of magical plants and funghi that are then sold in other shops all accross the country. It's not the most fulfilling job, but I'd chosen to give that up for safety, and Greta manages to make the days less monotonous. Her family offered to house me until I saved enough to get a place of my own (Mrs. Prewett keeps egging me in the direction of the male workers around my age - undoubtedly they expect me to get a place of my own by marrying).  
Greta spends her days bothering me (amusing me) while I work and swooning over her fiance, who comes every other day to do a lot of discrete staring and flirting. Oswald Selwyn is an Auror-in-training, from an important family, and Greta happens to like him despite his arrogant Gryffindor attitude, so I make the effort of tolerating him. In exchange of having one of the children named after me.  
Although Selwyn's presence is overall annoying, in his efforts to impress Greta he talks about his work, a lot, including all of the things that the Daily Prophet doesn't write about. He never mentions any uprising, a group of dark wizards. It means that Tom is still laying low.  
That means that I am still safe.

  
The attacks begin without a warning and it reminds me that I don't know as much as I'd like to.  
Employed now as Miss Mary, the nanny of the Selwyn children, I take care of Helen and Peter while Greta goes in a hurry to the Ministry to find out what happened to her husband. The attacks have become more frequent, involving not only Muggles but also muggleborn wizards and witches as well as those who speak out against the Death Eaters. Aurors are also frequently caught in the crossfire.  
Mary, back at Hogwarts, writes of the uprising of the 'Death Eater children', the kids that are being drafted to the ranks as young as sixteen. Her own position as relatively neutral in the Slytherin House is at risk because the pressure for taking a side is rising more and more.  
The Daily Prophet comes bleaker every day, the prospect of a war covering the front pages. The polititians, of course, try to downplay it as terrorrism, but everyone knows the truth.  
The crack of apparition snaps me out of my thoughts, and I walk out of the nursery to find Greta supported by one of Oswald's colleagues. She is sobbing into her hands, crying her husband's name again and again.  
I see red. No one hurts the ones I love.

  
When the twins leave Hogwarts, I speak to Professor Dumbledore for the first time in years, asking to join his little group of fighters. He takes a good look at me, comparing me to Tom, I think.  
The Order of the Phoenix is small and filled with idealistic young people. It's the ideal recipe for disaster, as they tend to leap into action before thinking if they can get out of it. Of course, it's up to me to clean up the mess, organizing strategies, gathering supplies and making sure that everyone gets the hell out of the battle when they are told to (the most common offenders being Black, Potter and, surprisingly, Mary). I may not be a very experienced duelist, even if I am learning, but I can think up escape routes and creative plans on the spot and it gets us out of most situations.  
It doesn't mean that I don't fail. Sometimes I'm not fast enough or we don't have the right information and it costs us Greta's cousins, Fabian and Gideon, or the McKinnons, or the muggleborns that were trying to run to France. I fail and it hurts, at first because I'm being defeated and the because it genuinely does hurt.  
Ah, when did Mary Riddle stop caring only about herself and a very small number of people? It sounds like a joke.  
Are you proud of me, sister?

  
As Lily Potter's belly grows, Greta lays on her bed, sickness draining all of her strenght. The final whispers of life in her say her husband and children's names and Margaret Selwyn dies with a smile on her lips and my hand in hers. Roughly half an hour later, a little boy named Harry Potter is brought to the world and James jokingly says that he'll be as much of a problem to me as he and Sirius are.  
The little baby in my arms is fast asleep, his features so very different from Greta's but so much the same. My finger traces a line from the top of his head to the tip of his nose and the intense love I felt for only two people transfers to the boy wrapped in this blue blanket.  
Lily watches the interaction with a soft smile, her hands clasped together on her lap.  
"Would you like to be his godmother?"  
I blink, confused. "Wouldn't you prefer someone else? Alice or Minerva, perhaps?"  
Harry squirms in my arms and Lily motions for me to hand him over. She holds the baby near her chest, rocking him back to sleep.  
"I think you'd be the best choice. You are kind and compassionate, even if a bit standoffish. You're the mother of the group. Besides, James will chose Sirius and I need someone who keeps him in check."  
I snort. Of course Sirius Black needs a babysitter, that little lovable moron.  
It's only later that I realize the irony of Mary Riddle being Harry Potter's godmother, and I laugh so much that I feel like crying.

  
The Potters go into hiding but the war continues, an endless struggle back and forth. We encounter many new Death Eaters, their numbers multiplying like rabbits. It isn't just purebloods now, with halfbloods joining in out of fear, mostly. The Order's numbers, on the other hand, keep dwindling, as the members die and recruitment becomes harder and harder.  
The Ministry is being taken over, puppet polititians taking important positions. The Daily Prophet writes less and less of the attacks and battles. It's a losing battle, or so it appears, and we slip more and Dorcas is killed, or we take a wrong turn and Mary is facing Rabastan Lestrange and Alecto Carrow and she leaves without her left arm and a scar on her throat. We're dying out, the hope for a better future is dying out.  
And, to be honest, I don't want to die. I never did, not ever since I promised myself not to after...  
But I have to do this, to protect Harry and to avenge Greta's broken heart and for that I need to keep fighting.  
What do I do, sister? What do I do, Greta?

  
It takes a wrong turn and Mary is knocked out while Victoria Vance and I battle the group of four that comes from all directions. The Portkey is laying next to my namesake, its glow indicating that it will teleport away any minute now, and I want nothing more than to grab the two girls and flee with them but the seconds it'd take to connect with the shoe that is the Portkey would leave is vulnerable to the enemy fire. Not for the first time today, I curse the wards that forbid Apparition here.  
A quick reducto is dodged by Turais Yaxley, and the Death Eater (kid, he's still what, eighteen?) sends a cutting curse in my direction that catches my left leg. Limping, the Petrificus Totalus I send shatters his barriers completely and he falls onto his face on the cold, hard ground. With one down, I can push Victoria to the ground on top of Mary with my good leg and send the Portkey to them, just in time to see it activate and disappear with the two girls.  
Leaving me alone with three opponents. How utterly Gryffindorish of me.  
Let's wreck them, then.

  
Surprinsingly, I was not killed on the confrontation three-to-one, managing instead to place them in bondage, unconsciousness, or both. Unfortunely for me, the cavalry has just arrived, including a good number of Death Eaters, dear Bellatrix Lestrange, and Tom himself.  
Geez. He wasn't a snake quite yet, but he was cutting it close, with his red eyes and pale skin and those features - is he beginning to bald? Compared to him, I almost look pretty.  
And that's how you know that the blood loss is getting to me. In front of dear, murderous Tom all I can think of is his appearance.  
"Mary Riddle" he begins, drawing out the syllables longer than the necessary. "It's been, what, almost fourty years!"  
He walks over to me, circling me, and his wand, stark white like bone, catches my chin, forcing me to look up, straight into his eyes.  
"I've been waiting for an opportunity like this, sister."  
He's called me his sister? In front of his followers?  
Wait, they don't understand. He must be speaking in Parseltongue.  
He continues his monologue.  
"For the longest time, I thought you were useless like that Muggle father of mine, but I realize now that you are powerful, powerful like the Gaunts of old. You, the last true Gaunt child, bearer of the name."  
He smiles, or tries to. He simply stretches the skin of his mouth, shlwing his teeth, looking altogether feral and nothing llke the charming boy he'd once been. I gulp nervously when his wand comes too close to my neck than what I feel comfortable with.  
"We can wipe out the filth that covers this world. You don't have to pretend to be someone you are not anymore. Join me, Mary."  
I think of Greta and Mary and Helen and Peter and Lily and James and Sirius and Harry and all the others and it gives me the courage to open my mouth and say "No."  
And then knifes are stabbing my body, and burning me, and drowning me, I can't breathe, my lungs are full of water, and my body is torn and sewed together to be torn apart again. Somewhere far away, I can see Tom lazily pointing his wand at me, but then the pain takes the forefront again and I am screaming and the sand is burying me, I have sand in my lungs, I cough and it doesn't come out, I can't breathe, there's mucus in my lungs, and I scream-  
It stops. I'm laying on the ground, a puddle of tears and snot and a bit of blood from my leg and my tongue - when did I bite my tongue? - and one of Tom's underlings takes my arm roughly makes me kneel.  
"Now, Mary, you must remember that you are in a very precarious situation here. You join me or you die."  
Tom looks down on me, his gaze fixing me to the spot. I can't fight, I can't run, and I sure as hell won't help him hurt the people I love. Or anyone else, for that matter. (I regret not saving Myrtle, I regret not using my knowledge of the plot to change things, I could have destroyed the Horcruxes if I wasn't so hell-bent on getting revenge, I regret being cold and aloof to the little boy named Tom who may have been cold and aloof as well but still was a child, they're all children, aren't they?)  
It takes every once of courage I possess to look up. Once, the children of the orphanage didn't connect, didn't make friends because they had to look out for each other, but they didn't know the power of caring. Tom never learned it. Mary Riddle did, and it dawns on me that I could have been him.  
"Kill me then." I say.  
A green light is the last thing I see before it all turns to black, like falling asleep.

  
The whiteness of the place is blinding, considering that the grounds I died in were pretty dark. It takes me a moment to be able to see, and then I notice that the cold I feel is because of my lack of clothing and I wish I had something to wear. As soon as I think it, a dress appears out of thin air. After the shock settles in, I wish to have a million galleons here with me, only to be disappointed when they don't appear. So it has limits, hmm?  
Now dressed and ready to explore, the place I found myself in reveals itself rather similar to a train station and I wonder why that is familiar before I remember just where I read it. After Harry died, between life and death. I'm pretty damn sure that I'm dead and that there is no going back, so I'm unsure what I am doing here.  
"Still a nut head, aren't you?"  
I freeze. I know that voice, I grew up with it, alongside it. My sister stares disapprovingly at me before breaking into a big smile.  
"Honestly, when you started your new life, I thought you'd become depressed again. Thank goodness you had that Margaret girl with you to break you out of your shell."  
She takes a few steps forward and holds out her hands to take mine, thumbs caressing my palms. I start trembling.  
"You did very good, though. You became very good and- Oh!" I tackle her into a hug and sob on her shoulder, and she pats my back a few times.  
"You have two options now. You can go back and be reborn again, or you can move on."  
I laugh. "Do you even have to ask? I'm not doing that all over again."  
A whistle is blown, abnouncing the arrival of the train, and I pull my sister's hands to take a seat and go to the afterlife, to the place I should have gone in the first place. In the train, I see Greta and Oswald, my parents from before, a woman who looks sad but is happy at seeing me, spirits who glow in the light, becoming translucent.  
I'm home.

* * *

She dies on a cold winter night at the hands of her half-brother, a man cursed by the madness that runs through their family. She dies refusing to turn against the ones she loves and all the others even at the cost of her life, standing tall and proud like a corageous goddess. She was born a witch and lived as a mother and she died as both, loving and being loved.  
Years later, when Harry Potter looks at the photograph of the members of the Order of the Phoenix, he will learn of the godmother he never knew and ask for her story, and he will only receive pieces because no one knows all of it, but the image of the bravery and loyalty will remain.

  
If asked about a student it once Sorted named Mary Riddle, the Sorting Hat would lament not placing her in Gryffindor like it'd wanted to all those years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment.  
> Or maybe not.  
> Do your thing.
> 
> Edit: fixed typos.


End file.
